What politics means is an open question, but there is no doubt that politics is meaningful. Politics and language are thus inseparable, and our faculty examine their relation in various and complementary ways. We study how language constructs our political and legal reality, as well as how it occasionally disrupts it. We study the use of framing in political communication, as well the politics of framing. We study the role of protests in the Middle East, as well as the impact of new media for the American democratic process. We bring insights from ordinary language philosophy to the project of an empirical social science, and we read classics of social science for new insights in the philosophy of language. We are open to students with diverse methodologies, backgrounds and interests, and are a generally likable bunch.